


Confabulation

by parallelmonsoon



Series: Father Figure Verse [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, But no real corpses, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt/Comfort, Janus teaching Virgil to deal with Remus being Remus, No big deal, Remus being Remus, Virgil is a spider, accidental limb loss, friendly maulings between siblings, hurt Janus, pretend corpses, pretend hurt that doesn't stay that way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25451326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon
Summary: The story of why Janus felt the need to remove Virgil and Remus' memories of their childhood.In which Remus is Remus, Virgil is Virgil, and Thomas dooms them both by doing the one thing he can't avoid.He grows up.
Series: Father Figure Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810264
Comments: 103
Kudos: 134





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Starts off cute, but will most assuredly not stay that way. This will be a sad one. 
> 
> (Also Virgil starts off as a little spider eldritch horror, so tw for spiders I suppose.)

There was a trick to children.

A kid takes a fall. If you came rushing over to pick them up, made a fuss of it, that child would be all but guaranteed to start wailing.

...but if you merely said “oops.” Wandered over nonchalant, set them on their feet, and congratulated them on their perfect 10 of a tumble. More likely than not that same child will bounce off without a care.

So.

“Oops.” Janus stepped over Virgil's still twitching leg and leaned down to inspect the nub that remained. “Let's see now...I count eleven, so you still have a *leg up* on the rest of us.”

It was a Patton-level pun, but it got him a throaty little giggle. Janus let Virgil crawl up to his shoulder and stood, adding a little bounce to it to make the boy shriek joyful. Right in his ear, alas, but a parent's sacrifices were legion.

He offered a hand to Remus. Who stood not precisely ashamed or concerned, but certainly unsure. “I just wanted...” The rest was lost when he turned slowly to sand and crumbled, falling in gobs that trickled away between the floorboards. Janus rocked in place as he waited for him to pull himself together, throwing in a sideways jolt from time to time to keep Virgil guessing. “...to see what would happen.”

“I know,” Janus assured him as Remus' little hand curled around his own, “No harm done, and I think Virgil's first lost limb warrants an ice cream, don't you?”

In the kitchen he set out three bowls. Green tea for himself, dark chocolate for Virgil, the chiming of a clock at midnight for Remus. “Now go play,” he said when the dribbles had been scrubbed from Virgil's bristles, “And aim for only a moderate mess, please.”

Remus had already bolted through the door (quite literally, and the hole he left behind was a cartoon silhouette of something stretched and curving.) Virgil bobbed agreement and scuttled after his brother on twelve good legs.

* * *

Only a few nights later a shout tore Janus from his reading.

He sighed. Set the book aside. Waited.

He heard the click-click-click coming rapid down the hall. Something dark scuttled into the room, a blur of joints and pinchers. Virgil threw himself at Janus with force enough to drive the air from his lungs, shoving himself between Janus' arm and chest and huddling there.

Remus following staggering. Gurgling and groaning, almost crawling the last few feet to Janus' chair.

“Virgil- Spoken in the rattling wheeze of one soon to expire. “- **bit** me.”

He flopped sideways to show Janus the wound. Two pinpricks at his wrist, already swelling a taunt, shiny red. Something glistened in the center of each puncture, a drop of oil-slick black.

Venomous, then. Janus had wondered.

“Did you deserve it?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” Remus said cheerfully.

Then his eyes rolled back, his tongue lolled, and he fell to lay quivering.

Virgil squalled like a in-heat cat and tried to shove his way behind Janus' back. His spines were up, and the rake of them had Janus wincing and bolting upright.

“Virgil, Virgil...calm down, beastling. Remus is fine.”

Virgil peeked out with one of his stalks. Peeped shrill when he saw Remus drooling foam and chittered something frantic before ducking back into hiding. Janus almost picked out a 'no, no, no' buried in the middle of it.

He smiled. Virgil was getting a little closer to talking everyday.

Janus stood, ignoring the way Virgil tried to claw him back, and toed the body at his feet. It rolled limp, the bite wound gone purulent and oozing all manner of foulness. The boy's face was purple, the open eyes blasted red with broken vessels.

“Remus,” Janus chided, “You're scaring your brother.”

Remus popped to his feet. Still a corpse but giggling wild, thoroughly pleased with himself. He whirled to the chair and thrust out his arm, waving it in temptation when Virgil cringed back instead of taking the bait.

“That was great! Let's do it again.”

Janus stepped between them. Scooped his little monstrosity up and cradled Virgil on his back, ticking between the tiny eyes that littered his pale belly.

“No harm done, spawn. You can't hurt Remus anymore then he can hurt you. Still, best not to bite anyone else.” He paused, considering. “Unless you **need** to. Need, not want, you understand? We can't all be as sturdy as your brother.”

He held Virgil's gaze (gazes?) until he whistled agreement. Lowered him a bit when Remus craned up on his tiptoes, a living boy again. Virgil blinked staccato at him, stretching out his hooks and claws.

“Hey, Verge...” Remus said as he gathered him in, “Poison was real cool, but you ever wonder how it'd look if I got burnt up all crispy?”

Virgil cheered. Janus waved the smoke from his nose and went back to his novel.

* * *

There was a trick to Remus.

Fear him, and fantasy would slip its lead to stalk feral. Becoming if not real, then real **enough**.

Dismiss him, and the floodwaters swelled. It was Thomas who suffered then, shivering in the night and pushing his fists against his temples.

Imagine with him, and it stayed just that. Dark dreams that faded as soon as the mind drifted to some new distraction.

No harm. No foul.

No consequence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Virgil's first word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a little happy snippet before the coming angst
> 
> Warning for friendly sibling murder and the usual Remus body horror

When Thomas was young his fears were simple.

The bully at the park who liked to steal his toys. Getting sent to the quiet seat after raising a ruckus at school. The rasp of tree branches against his window at night.

Small fears for a small boy. Little anxieties for a little not-quite spider.

Most of the time it was easy enough for Janus to soothe them away. A cuddle and a scritch just there between his stalks. An offer to coil sturdy around him while he slept. A reminder that little in the dark could be scarier then Virgil's own scuttling self.

And should those tried and true comforts fail?

There was always Remus.

“Why don't you go see your brother,” Janus suggested, “I'm sure he would adore hearing about that delightful nightmare you've been working on.”

Remus clapped in delight, and the thick squelch of it made Janus grind his teeth. He could deal with most everything but moist.

“The one with the teeth?” Remus bared his own, and the sweat dripped thick between them.

“The very same.”

He gave Remus a little push toward the thick bundle of webs in the corner of the living room. It took Remus a bit to ooze his way over.

“Viiirgil.” The sort of soft, coaxing call a serial killer might use. “Vergie-poo, come oooout...”

Virgil didn't, of course. No doubt he was curled up at the very center, shivering until his joints rattled.

Which just meant Remus would have to make his way **in**.

Remus stretched out his arms. One atop the other, like he was miming a giant pair of scissors. Instead of blades they grew jags, bone struts that tore and chewed at the webbing. Scraps of it came fluttering, and Janus brushed them from his shoulders and flicked them from his gloved fingers.

The instant he found himself exposed Virgil exploded out of his nest. He shot across the room, flattening himself cockroach thin and scuttling under the coach. Janus pulled his legs up just in time as Remus followed after, bones popping and cracking as he compressed himself.

A scrape, a hiss, and the couch jolted. Janus decided the better part of valor was retreat and made his way to the recliner.

Fear, like shame, wasn't something Remus understood. So he set to doing what Remus did best. Poking and prodding and babbling on about all manner of grotesqueness. Whining shrill when Virgil tried to huddle away from him, because Remus?

Would **not** be ignored.

Until finally, as he always did, Virgil **snapped**.

The screech echoed, doubling and tripling over itself. Janus could feel it throb low in his belly, could feel the pulse of it in his eyes. Both boys came boiling out from under, rolling across the floor as a mess of limbs and less definable parts.

Janus picked his feet up again.

Remus was hooting. Cackling wild, absolutely delighted by the fact his brother was currently attempting to throttle him. The battle raged for a good while. The couch soon fell victim, its innards shredded and flung about the room (quite literal innards, courtesy of Remus.) The television too, when Virgil threw Remus through it.

A pause. Remus lay still, spasming slightly from the electricity coursing through him. His fists were clenched tight, a tiny flame sputtering at the tip of his raised middle fingers.

Virgil giggled.

Janus smiled.

Virgil crept closer. Zigzagging side to side, until he suddenly lurched in and tagged Remus with a slap of his pedipalp before darting away.

Remus lay still. Virgil trilled and came bouncing back. The cycle repeated a half dozen times before Remus shot up and tackled his brother before he could escape.

“Boys,” Janus warned mildly when it looked like the renewed battle was coming a little too close for comfort. The tangle of hooks and spines and Remus paused, then went frothing off in a new direction.

Virgil was screeching again, but it was high and light, almost a yodel. It climbed even higher in pitch when Remus shifted into something that lumbered askew and tried to swallow him whole. Virgil escaped between his teeth and shot a web up to the ceiling, then dropped down on his brother's head and stabbed him through the eye with one of his legs.

“Die!”

The room shook as the carcass hit the floor, but that wasn't what made Janus drop his pen. He stood slowly, made his way to Virgil, and scooped him up without regard for the artery spray dripping from his bristles. Spun him around until Virgil was whistling gleeful, then dropped a kiss right between his largest pair of eyes.

His baby boy's first word.

Janus couldn't be prouder.


	3. Dwelling Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of the day Remus went on a walk about. 
> 
> Or Remus makes a mistake. Janus fixes it.

Something was wrong.

Janus startled awake. Chest tight, groggy and confused and certain down to his metaphysical bones that **something was wrong**. Something was breaking. **Thomas** was breaking, and he rolled off the couch and to his feet.

And promptly staggered, fighting to find his balance. Because the room was shaking, and he hadn't felt it, before, because he was shaking too.

The room was shifting. Flexing, pulsing like it was drawing breath. A crack spiraled across the ceiling, and the plaster that drifted down sizzled when it touched his skin. The furniture flickered. The couch to a bed to a table to the nothing, the nothing that they were, and if Janus had been any other side it would have ended him there and then.

“Boys!”

Silence.

And already Janus knew.

He might have checked the bedrooms. The closets, the dark places Virgil was likely to hide. But he knew, and the world around him was shrieking, a tea kettle whistle as its seams came apart. He was the room, and the room was him, and all of it, all of it was...

Janus sunk out.

It was a different kind of wrongness, rising up.

It was something Janus had done only rarely. The world...the real world...it grated. Substantial and solid and sturdy. He stood on a floor that was only a floor, facing a bed that was only a bed. Even the press of the air felt different, and though the bedroom was large, claustrophobia made Janus draw his arms in close.

And in the bed, Thomas. Just a lump under the quilt. Huddling in the stuffy darkness, not a toe left uncovered. Protected from the monsters by a duvet and desperate faith.

And there, the monsters.

“Remus!” Janus snapped.

Remus went on bouncing on the mattress, jostling Thomas' small form. Bouncing and babbling, a torrent of rot. Too excited to even notice Janus' arrival. Too excited to hold himself together, and Thomas, the things he must have seen before he went to ground and burrowed in...

Virgil was tugging at his brother. Trying to claw him back, but there was so little there to hold onto. He came running when he spotted Janus, half boy and half spindly nightmare, and oh, Thomas was never going to look at a spider the same way again, no doubt.

“Papa papa papa...”

Janus scooped him up. “Virgil...Virgil, **listen**.” The sharpness of it made Virgil freeze. It was not a tone Janus had used toward him before, and Remus only rarely. “You're going back. I need you to keep Remus there. Web him. **Bite him**. Don't let him leave. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Virgil was clutching at him. Claws digging in and scrapping bloody wounds, and here was another thing Janus had never done before. He pushed Virgil away. Pushed him **down** , and the tempest tongue scream as he fell out of the world made the boy on the bed choke on a sob.

Now Remus.

Janus looked at the whirl of ideas that was his son. A boy- a thought- a boy- a thought. And again and again that thought was of Thomas' brother. Bent and broken and bleeding in a myriad of ways. Eaten by sharks. Fried by electric eels. Cartoon violence, most of it, but Remus...Remus made it real. The glisten of the fat just under the skin. The spongy red marrow inside the chewed through bones.

It must have started there, then. Some argument that night. A 'borrowed' action figure, perhaps. Thomas had gone to bed angry. And there, cozy and safe in his bed, he had allowed his imagination to wander.

And wander it had.

All because Janus had been **napping**.

Janus didn't try to collect Remus as he otherwise might have. Instead he reached into him. Past the wet and the squelch, past **Remus** himself. Into him and through him, to grasp hold of his core.

It hurt them both. A shocking invasion that had Janus biting back a scream. The taste of river mud flooded his tongue.

Virgil he pushed. Remus he **threw**. Hopefully it would stun him long enough for Virgil to sink his fangs in deep.

The only sound then was the snuffling, breathless hiccups as Thomas tried to swallow back his tears. Too frightened to move or call out, and that was one small mercy.

Janus padded quiet to the bed. He would only get one chance at this, he knew.

Five minutes. Janus could hear the boy's teeth chattering. He'd be in something close to shock, poor thing. By the shape of the lump he was curled fetal, hands pressed tight to his ears.

At some point he must have realized the cacophony around him had stopped. The sharp points his elbows pressed into the blanket eased as he tentatively let his hands down and listened. Still, Thomas was wise. It was another ten minutes before the bundled quilt started to shift with purpose.

Janus stepped sideways then. Just off-center to the real world, into the softness in-between. It wasn't somewhere he could linger long. It clung, that place, wrapping around him like one of Virgil's webs. He waited for Thomas to claw back the blanket. Winced at the sight of the boy's face. Stark white, lips bloodless, eyes blown wide and glassy.

He had hoped, perhaps, that Thomas might have been able to do some of the work on his own. That he might emerge having already half-convinced himself he'd been dreaming. But those eyes were still seeing horrors, and the boy's jackrabbit tenseness suggested he meant to break for the door.

Janus fought his way free. Resolved back into the world, just in front of Thomas, and caught his eyes before the boy could gasp.

And **pulled**.

Janus himself was well used to Remus. But to see him now through Thomas' eyes...

Little wonder it had nearly broken him.

Even Virgil, who had, in his own way, been trying to help. A creeping thing that trilled and begged and shouldn't exist, couldn't exist.

Janus made sure to take every scrap of it. There would be scars (in more ways than one), but he can keep it from destroying the boy.

(The boy. As if it were that simple. This was Thomas. Janus' Thomas. This was **his** core, standing before him. It was dizzying and wonderful and horrific, to have any separation from the place where Janus lived.)

He pulled until he was sure. Ignoring the growing burn in his side, the burn that made him show his teeth in a snarl. Until Thomas was blinking slow and easy and scrubbing at the snot streaking his face with a balled fist. Half-asleep already, and though he might dream he would not remember them.

Bent double now and with his hand pressed against his flank, Janus started to sink out. Hesitated, looking at this small thing that was his universe.

“I love you,” he told Thomas, and that much he could keep.


	4. Dwelling 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janus returns home and starts to deal with the fallout.

Janus knew it was difficult for them.

Kept cloistered, down here in the soft places. He tried. Tried to educate and entertain, to serve as parent, playmate, and friend. Tried to make it less a prison, a lie of denial that hid a deeper, more painful truth.

It **was** a prison. And Janus?

Their warden.

For a time his little shadows hadn't questioned. They had been content, with him and with each other, and 'more' was a word never spoken in the confines of their home.

But Janus had always known it couldn't last forever. They were growing, and a child needs his world to keep pace. Janus was not angry as he knelt beside Remus' cocooned corpse. Only weary, and fearful of what lay ahead.

He waited for Remus to remember living was a choice, and the pain in his side gnawed itself deeper with every breath. He could already feel the fever starting. His joints ached, his head throbbed, and it had been a long time since he had taken so much from Thomas. It was hard enough when it was one of the other sides, but with Thomas...

Nothing wanted to be forgotten. Memories had their own way of fighting back.

He sat sweating, and in his lap Virgil curled close, hands fisted in Janus' shirt. He was something in-between, now. Growing as Thomas grew, a boy shape but still mostly spider. Janus rather missed when he was small enough to ride on his shoulder. 

“'..sorry Papa,” Virgil whispered, and Remus' blood was bright on his chin.

Janus rubbed his back and said nothing. He couldn't forgive him. Not for this. The guilt would be another chain to bind them, and he only hoped it would prove strong enough.

Remus was taking his time. Janus closed his eyes against the growing dizziness and swallowed hard, a dry click. The sickness was worse than the pain, somehow. The fading memories were more akin to infection than wound, and left long enough would **fester**. The pain at least was a bright, clean thing, but the fever muddied him.

He suspected Remus' delay was mere avoidance. He also knew his son would break soon enough. Death was nothing, and nothing was something Remus could not abide.

Still, he was starting to shiver when the Remus cocoon began to rock. It split down the middle, and something loathsome pushed up through the crack. A moth, but wizened and fishbelly white. Looping patterns scrolled across its wings, twisting in and pulsing in, and they did Janus' already queasy belly no favors.

“Remus,” he said, and his thirst turned it into a croak. He felt Virgil startle against him and twist to look up into Janus' face. He made to smile, a reflexive thing meant to reassure. Caught himself, and let the pain show. It was some small relief, at least, to let himself grimace and scowl.

“Remus,” he said again, this time with fangs behind it. A tone that meant no games, and Remus flashed brighter in response, rapier tongue unfurling to stab the air.

Janus sighed. Set Virgil aside, ignoring his clutching, and forced himself to his feet. The burn in his side went nova. He swayed against it. Coughed, and tasted bile.

“Remus.” A third time, and it wasn't firm, wasn't angry. Just very quiet, and Remus went still. Shrank in on himself, skin bubbling away to become a boy again.

He managed to look contrite for all of ten seconds. Then broke wild, howling his glee and spinning a circle.

“I saw I saw I saw,” he chanted, “He saw he saw he saw me me **ME**.”

Virgil lashed out when Remus tried to drag him into the dance. Janus did wonder how his nervous creepling had gotten dragged along upside. Had Remus taken him by force? Did Virgil follow after in hopes of bringing Remus back before Janus noticed their absence?

Not that it mattered. Motive never did when the consequences were so dire.

“You did,” Janus agreed, “ **He** did.”

He caught Remus by the shoulders. Forced him still, and all of Remus was vibration, the thrill of a need he hadn't even known was there suddenly sated.

“He saw, Thomas saw, and you nearly **ruined** him, Remus. Both of you. One look at you, and Thomas...”

Virgil understood. Virgil was whining, shaking his head in fear of the might-have-been. Virgil, at least, knew what he was. Even if he had gone to Thomas of his own volition, he would have felt the boy's stark terror. Would have shared in it, and for the first time would have known what it was to fear one's self.

But Remus. Remus heard ruined and clapped in delight. Lolled out his tongue, still the long, coiling tube of a moth, and licked slavering at the air.

“Thomas breaks we all fall down!” he singsonged, and yes. Yes they did.

There was no sense pressing the point. Remus didn't care about protecting Thomas. He **couldn't**. He could love him, in his own fashion, but he would never coddle, never placate. It was given to Janus to hide the things Thomas was not yet ready for, and it was given to Remus to bring them to light. 

It would have been an exercise in futility to continue lecturing Remus about the repercussions to **Thomas**. How lucky, then, that Thomas had not been the only one to bear the cost that day.

Janus backed away. Raised a hand, twisting his wrist just so.

Remus' eyes shot wide and desperate when his own hand clamped down over his mouth. He might have given himself others, a hundred yapping maws, but they both knew it wouldn't have mattered. Janus' power was no more confined to the rules of mundane reality than Remus' own.

He could see the betrayal in the boy's face. Janus had never silenced him before. Has promised him once he never would, but what was a promise but a lie in waiting? 

Virgil was huddled close at Janus' feet. “Stand with your brother,” Janus told him, and Virgil was quick to obey, scrambling sideways in his disjointed, high-stepping way. Eager to show himself obedient, though Janus doubted it would last. Fear of disappointing a parent, while powerful in the moment, became naught but a memory with the right temptation.

“Thomas saw you,” he told them both, and he could taste it now, the sickness slick and oily on his tongue. “But he won't remember. Do you understand, Remus? He's **forgotten** you.”

Already Remus was crying. Snotty and sniveling, because that was worse even than silence. A little living death all Remus' own.

Janus ignored the tears. He could not afford to waver.

“I **made** him forget. Do you want to know how?”

They didn't. Deceit snapped away his shirt anyway. Turned to show them the dark blotch above his hip.

The boys cried out. Virgil in his tempest tongue, Remus muffled and guttural. Janus himself could not help but flinch from the sight.

The scales, normally a mottled green, had gone black and shriveled. Viscous, yellow fluid filled the gaps between them, stinking of iron and milk long curdled.

“Thomas' memories,” Deceit said, “To take them from him I have to make them part of me. But taking them changes them. They're dead now, you understand? And what happens to dead things, Remus?”

Remus squealed behind his hand. Janus nodded as if he had spoken.

“That's right. Dead things **rot**.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Usual warnings for body horror and pain

He made the boys watch.

They sat in a tight huddle on the couch, each fighting to grip the other tighter, closer. Released from Janus's hold, Remus mumbled quick and fervent, crass asides and twisted limericks that passed by without impact. Virgil's fangs clattered together with a noise like a rainstick's tumbling beads and his spines were high, puncturing through Remus's cheeks to flash dark with his mutterings.

The first scale was always the hardest. Janus ungloved with mechanical precision, taking a moment to arrange them just so as he set them aside. A stalling tactic, but what of it? He was a creature more suited to caution than courage, and this was going to **hurt**.

His talons were short and curved gently at the tips, made for just this thing. He worked them under the nasty, shriveled thing, clenching his jaw against the pinching pain. As if he might savage the hurt in return, grip it tight between his fangs and grind it down to powder and ash. 

And then he started to **pry**. 

Pry and **twist**. Round and round, until the scale popped free with a sudden, sucking slurp. Janus let it fall from his slick fingertips to lay lonely against the carpet. A bubble of bright blood welled up in the hole left behind, quivering tense before it overfilled and trickled down.

Janus glanced at the boys. Frowned. 

"Virgil," he said sharply, and waited for the faint pop as a myriad of eyes blinked open. Less eyes then there had been, once. Janus felt that slow, bittersweet melancholy again. He supposed it was only natural. Growth was about loss as much as gain.

Satisfied, Janus turned back to his work. Scale by scale, and each scale a memory, a suspended moment seen through Thomas's eyes.

_Remus, looming up. **Becoming**. Drawing himself together from the shadows cast by Thomas's dinosaur nightlight, a terrible betrayal. Only Remus (only **Thomas** ) for the briefest moment before spinning himself into something much worse.   
_

_Mikey. Mikey gutted, Mikey bleeding, and Thomas's scream was all internal at the sight of his brother torn wide._

Janus took a moment to breath. Slow and forced, waiting for the darkness pulsing at the edges of his vision to recede.

_Virgil. Half glimpsed, a chitinous bristling blur that made Thomas think of the daddy-long-legs in the basement, a memory within a memory of their bobbing, prancing strides. He'd squashed one, once. Pulled the legs from another, and then he'd cried, cried while it staggered and went round in circles, because he hadn't meant to **hurt** it. Or he had, but not for **realies** , not for keeps. And maybe, maybe this was the spider climbing up the waterspout, the spider come to play, and Thomas wanted to say sorry, to explain he hadn't meant it, hadn't even known what he was going to do until the leg was between his fingers, skinny as a thread.) _

There was a good dozen scales littering the floor. The flow of blood mingled with the pus and ichor, turning the mess into something the color and consistency of...

"Strawberry milkshake," Remus whispered, and there was no savor in it. 

He sat still, or **stillish**. Muttering, always muttering, but not shifting, not unmaking and remaking and chasing himself down rabbit holes of thought. There was feverish excitement on his face, but something else too, something unfamiliar. A twist of the mouth that was almost a frown.

Good.

"Rot spreads," Janus told them, and his voice slurred rough across the sibilants. "If I were to leave it, it would grow. It would eat me up." 

"Fungus among us. Mushy in our bones and we're rooms, we're rooms for the bugs and they bed in the red and the...."

Janus tuned Remus back out and hooked another scale. This one held a little firmer, and when it finally came loose his hiss made Virgil cower. It wasn't just the pain, though the pain was bad enough. It was the **twist**. The pop, the sundering separation from something he had taken for his own. 

_Thomas grasping white-knuckled for his blankie. Fighting to untangle it, pulling it up and over and plunging himself into a darkness that was friendlier than the light._

_Curling up tight tight tight and struggling to breath through the plug of his snot._

Janus's knees gave out. He landed hard, his own discarded scales digging into the meat of his palms. Virgil scrambled free of Remus's hold, throwing himself against Janus with an impact that made him groan. Pulling at him, fretful and rough, sobbing a little boy's boohoohoos. His tears were webs that smeared tacky across Janus's bare chest when Virgil nuzzled in, chittering in a way he hadn't done since he was small.

"A snake head can bite after you cut it off!" Remus was standing on the couch. Straining forward, but **staying**. Despite the way his bones trembled, pressing forward against the shell of his skin. Any pride Janus felt at his restraint was tainted by sorrow. 

Even Remus. Even Remus was growing up, or maybe just growing sideways, stretching out into himself. Learning restraint, however slight, and that had never been something Janus wanted for him.

"You chop chop and you think it's done." No more muttering. Remus was shouting, bellowing, and Virgil's tempest scream rose to met it. "But it waits. Wide open, and do you think it knows? When it bites? Or..."

Janus indulged himself by pressing a quick, hard kiss to Virgil's forehead. "Remus." He didn't raise his voice. "Come take him."

Virgil's wail rose in both pitch and volume when Remus yanked him away. It thrummed in Janus's spine and turned his belly to water. His gorge rose, and he swallowed it back with fierce desperation, the thought of vomiting across his own blackened scales so strangely loathsome he couldn't bear it.

He didn't try to stand. Just plopped back on his rump, hissing again at the jolt. The patch was much smaller now, but Janus's hand shook so badly it took him several tries each time he reached for another.

_Thomas listening to the awful, awful sounds that filled the room. Like the slime containers at school, but so much louder, so much worse._

_Remus singing. A song of brother, brothers and endings, describing in lavish detail what would decay and what would **stay**. _

_(And somehow that was the worst part. The thought of Mikey chewed up and passed through worms. Mikey would be part of the dirt, then, and Thomas would walk on him every time he crossed the lawn. He would track Mikey mud all across the kitchen on rainy days, and mommy would huff and tell him to clean up after himself. He would have to wipe his brother up with paper towels and throw him away, right there in the bin with the 'nana peels and yogurt cups.)_

Janus was panting. Hiccuping on the panicky, stuttering beat of his heart, and he could not, **must not,** pass out. He would never wake if he did, and his boys, his precious terrors...

Growing up or not, they still needed him.

"If you go to Thomas again, I'll have to do this again," he said, because talking helped.

_A voice, and it was new and deep and for a moment, a wonderful moment, Thomas thought it was his father._

"And if I have to it enough," Janus went on, "...someday, it will kill me."

_But then "papa papa papa", and it couldn't be daddy, because daddy was only Thomas's daddy. Thomas's and Mikey's, and that hadn't sounded like Mikey, not at all._

"I'll be gone, do you understand?"

He could see they didn't, not really. How could they? For all Remus's fascination with it, death to him was only a game. It was used as good morning, good night, a release, a way to settle petty arguments at the breakfast table. Impermanent. A pause, not an end. 

Janus had worked hard to make sure of it.

_The worst sound of all. Gushy and gross, but somehow it also wasn't a sound. It was **inside** Thomas, in his head, and behind his teeth, and it seemed to go on forever. Even when it stopped and the silence started, the sound was still there, echoing down and down and down..._

"I'll be gone," Janus told them, **"And I won't. come. back."**

He knew what he was doing. This was the tipping point.

The beginning of the end.

"Gone?" Virgil whispered. He scrunched himself small, squeezing his eyes shut and hugging himself in a cage of his legs. Rocking back and forth in Remus's lap, and oh, Janus so wished he could have spared him this. Gone was such a big word. Enormous. 

"Gone," Janus repeated, but now he was looking at Remus. "Forever and ever. No more Papa. Remus? Do you hear me? Dead and **gone**."

Remus started to speak. Cut himself off, shaking his head until his neck snapped, the bones grinding with shivery sound. 

He howled, and his jaw gaped grotesquely wide. And there within was a void, a black hole that wasn't a color, wasn't a *thing*. Just emptiness, an opening into eternity. 

"Yes," Janus said, and the relief was profound. "Yes, Remus! Oh, you brilliant little horror, **yes**."

_Straining to listen. So sure it was a trap, and Thomas wanted his mommy and his daddy and even Mikey. Mikey who let him sleep in his bed sometimes, and he might tonight, too, if Thomas could brave the hall. Mikey who teased and poked and told jokes and always let Thomas have all of the green gummy bears._

Just a few scales left. And then just one, and Janus saw himself through Thomas's eyes.

_The other monsters had been small. Thomas sized. This one stood tall. Not quite a grown up, but old enough. Scaled, and with an eye that flashed yellow._

_Yellow. Everything was yellow. Thomas was yellow, and he knew, for just an instant, that the yellow was Janus and Janus was Thomas. He knew so many things. Knew that he was endless, knew that he was both the center and the source. He was a room. A world.  
_

_And then he was just Thomas. Standing scared and sniveling and desperately needing to pee._

_And Thomas..._

_...woke..._

_...up.  
_


End file.
